The Reluctant Gardener: A Short Story
By Debbie L. Miller
Ned closes the mailbox, stuffs the letter into his bathrobe pocket, and tramps up the dirt driveway. He tosses the rest of the mail on the counter and pours his fourth cup of coffee.
He plops down in his chair as the letter beckons, then eyes the pottery bowl she gave him on their two-month anniversary and the cedar chest still full of her clothes as he wipes the tears from his eyes and wishes he could disappear the way she did.
The last time he saw her, she was planting pansies under the bedroom window. It was a warm, early spring day, the kind of day where the ground is mushy and the odor of moss hangs in the air. The phone call was for her and it was brief. When she hung up, she hugged him as if her life depended on it. Then, she left.
He was crying then, too.
The pansies didn’t make it through summer.
Funny about time. It goes slowly when you’re young, almost painfully so, and by the time you hit middle age it speeds up. Since she left, time has flown by.
They’d had six years together. His love for her grew like their shared garden. The pansies were part of the bliss. There were tomatoes, too, and green peppers and spaghetti squash. Sky-blue delphiniums and taxi-cab yellow coreopsis. Just…
